we call an understanding of the word
or thing, is, for the most part, only in degree. Definitions and
explanations are doubtless highly useful, but induction is not definition,
and an understanding of words may be acquired without either; else no man
could ever have made a dictionary. But, granting the principle to be true,
it makes nothing for this puerile method of induction; because the regular
process by definitions and examples is both shorter and easier, as well as
more effectual. In a word, this whole scheme of inductive grammar is
nothing else than a series of _leading_ questions and _manufactured_
answers; the former being generally as unfair as the latter are silly. It
is a remarkable tissue of ill-laid premises and of forced illogical
sequences.

22. Of a similar character is a certain work, entitled, "English Grammar on
the _Productive System_: a method of instruction recently adopted in
Germany and Switzerland." It is a work which certainly will be
"_productive_" of no good to any body but the author and his publishers.
The book is as destitute of taste, as of method; of authority, as of
originality. It commences with "the _inductive_ process," and after forty
pages of such matter as is described above, becomes a "_productive_
system," by means of a misnamed "RECAPITULATION;" which jumbles together
the etymology and the syntax of the language, through seventy-six pages
more. It is then made still more "_productive_" by the appropriation of a
like space to a reprint of Murray's Syntax and Exercises, under the
inappropriate title, "GENERAL OBSERVATIONS." To Prosody, including
punctuation and the use of capitals, there are allotted six pages, at the
end; and to Orthography, four lines, in the middle of the volume! (See p.
41.) It is but just, to regard the _title_ of this book, as being at once a
libel and a lie; a libel upon the learning and good sense of
Woodbridge;[60] and a practical lie, as conveying a false notion of the
origin of what the volume contains.

23. What there is in Germany or Switzerland, that bears _any resemblance_
to this misnamed system of English Grammar, remains to be shown. It would
be prodigal of the reader's time, and inconsistent with the studied brevity
of this work, to expose the fallacy of what is pretended in regard to the
origin of this new method. Suffice it to say, that the anonymous and
questionable account of the "Productive System of Instruction," which the
author has bo